After 38 years, the
government’s case against eight former Black Panther Party members and
supporters has almost completely unraveled.

Harold Taylor and John
Bowman (recently deceased) as well as Ruben Scott (thought to be a
government witness) were first charged in 1975 with the murder of a San
Francisco police officer in 1971.

A California judge tossed out
the charges, finding that Taylor and his two co-defendants made statements
after police in New Orleans tortured them for several days employing electric
shock, cattle prods, beatings, sensory deprivation, plastic bags and hot,
wet blankets for asphyxiation.

Nevertheless, the SF 8 were arrested
in 2007 based on the same illegal “evidence” obtained by torture. Richard
Brown, Richard O’Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were arrested in
California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor
was arrested in Florida. Two men charged – Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim –
have been held as political prisoners for over 30 years in New York State
prisons.

Two and a half years of mass
support for the Brothers, including resolutions from the San Francisco
Central Labor Council, the Berkeley City Council, and several San
Francisco supervisors, broke the back of this vindictive prosecution
organized by Homeland Security, the FBI, and California Attorney General Jerry
Brown.

The prosecution was forced to
drop charges against Richard Brown, Hank Jones, Harold Taylor and Ray
Boudreaux, with prosecutors admitting they had “insufficient evidence” against
them. Charges had already been dropped against Richard O’Neal last
year. Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim were sentenced to probation and time
served, after Herman agreed to plead to voluntary manslaughter and Jalil to
conspiracy to voluntary manslaughter.

Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim
have been held as political prisoners for almost 40 years on similar charges
based on the US Government’s COINTELPRO actions to disrupt and destroy radical
organizations, especially the Black Panther Party. Showing the weakness of the
prosecution’s case, Bell and Muntaqim were given no additional prison time, and
have been returned to NY where they will continue to fight for parole.

The defense committee has
vowed to keep up the pressure until charges are dropped against Francisco
Torres and Herman and Jalil are back with their families and community.

Profiles
of the SF 8

Francisco
Torres, 58, of New York City. Cisco was born in Puerto Rico and raised
in New York City. He is a Vietnam Veteran who fought for the grievances of
Black and Latino soldiers upon his return to the states. A former Black
Panther, he has been a community activist since his discharge from the military
in 1969. He worked with troubled youth up to the day of his arrest.

Freed on bail September
2007, Cisco is the sole defendant to still face charges.

Herman Bell, 59,
of Mississippi, a political prisoner since 1973. Herman accepted a plea to a
reduced charge of manslaughter, with no additional incarceration. Cointelpro’s
“pattern of manipulation and lies, continuing into the present, indicates
something more than the ordinary corruption and racism of everyday law enforcement.
It can be understood only in terms of the power of the political movement that
[we] were part of, and the intensity of the government’s efforts to destroy
that movement and to disillusion and intimidate future generations of young
activists.”

He has returned to New York
where is eligible for parole. Write to him at: Herman Bell #
79D0262, Sullivan Correctional Facility, P.O. Box 116, 325 Riverside Drive,
Fallsburg, New York 12733-0116.

Ray Boudreaux, 64,
of Altadena, CA – all charges have been dismissed against Ray.

“Actually for the last 25
years I’ve lived a pretty peaceful and quiet life. My politics are still the
same. It’s just that I’m not active. People come to me sometimes as a
peace-maker. And all of that has to do with all of my experience.”

Richard Brown, 65,
of San Francisco – all charges have been dismissed against Richard.

“For the past six years I have
been a Community Court Judge Arbitrator working with the San Francisco District
Attorney’s office. We place a lot of emphasis on restorative justice, so most
of the community service done will be done in our own community where the
offender can give back to the community.”

Richard explained in an
interview (San Francisco Bay Guardian) “that the Black Panthers were
about ‘serving the people… and I continued to serve the people as an individual
by working with community-based organizations.’ [He also] works to push
alternatives to violence among black and brown youth, Brown has over 30 years
experience working in support of affirmative action. … ‘I’ve always been an
advocate, and have worked with all kinds of people to see that women and
minorities got what they deserved.’ He also has years of experience with the
African-American Community Police Relations Board, which works to improve
neighborhood interactions with the SFPD.”

Henry W. (Hank) Jones, 70,
of Altadena, CA – all charges have been dismissed against Hank.

“I [have lived] under the
constant threat of another … incarceration. In essence I have been robbed of
peace of mind, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I am therefore
compelled to resist these tactics and inform the public of my recent
experience, feeling that something similar could happen to anyone given the climate
of fear, paranoia, and abuse of authority that is rampant in our country
today.”

Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom), 55,
of San Francisco, a political prisoner in New York since 1978. Jalil accepted a
plea to a reduced charge of conspiracy, with no additional incarceration,
leading to the dropping of charges against Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Hank
Jones, and Harold Taylor.

“The United States does not
recognize the existence of political prisoners. To do so would give credence to
the fact of the level of repression and oppression, and have to recognize the
fact that people resist racist oppression in the United States, and therefore,
legitimize the existence of not only the individuals who are incarcerated or
have been captured, but also legitimize those movements of which they are a
part.”

He has returned to New York
where is eligible for parole. Write to him at: Anthony Jalil Bottom
#77A4283, Auburn Correctional Facility, 135 State Street, P.O. Box 618, Auburn,
NY 13021.

Richard O’Neal, 58,
has worked for the City of San Francisco for 25 years, most recently at the
Southeast Community Center in Bay View – all charges against Richard
have been dismissed (since February 7, 2008).

“People who work there said
they were stunned by his arrest, recalling him as a kind and gentle man who
always had a smile on his face and would stay late to fix lights or other
things.” (SF Chronicle) The dean of the campus noted, “He is a trusted employee
who would do anything to help us…He would take the shirt off his back to try to
help you.”

Harold Taylor, 58,
of Panama City, Florida – all charges have been dismissed against
Harold.

“In 1971, two brothers and I
were set up by the FBI. We didn’t learn about COINTELPRO until years later. In
1973 I was arrested in New Orleans and was beaten and tortured for several
days. in 2003 the detectives that were responsible for my torture came to my
house to try and question me. I have not been the same since.”

“It’s terrible to watch some
of the videos,” witnessing torture, at times resulting in death. Routinely,
guards yell at and abuse prisoners, “ordering them to lie on the ground and
crawl.” If they don’t “drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or
stomps on his back.” Another man screams when a dog bit his lower leg.

One other has a broken ankle,
can’t crawl fast enough so gets jabbed with a stun gun on his buttocks. Hours
later his whole body still shakes. Men line up across the cellblock, guards
standing over them shouting, prodding, kicking, and beating, their humiliation
captured on video. The images are horrifyingly brutal, reminders of Guantanamo
and Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib.

They’re as commonplace in
America, but unreported except by Channel 4 UK, calling it “wholesale torture
taking place inside the US prison system,” uncovered by a four-month
investigation, not based on rumor or suspicion. Throughout America, videos and
other solid evidence confirm it, what US major media reports won’t reveal.

In most states, prison
regulations mandate that guards videotape “use of force operations” like cell
searches, in theory to show proper procedures were used. Most often, they
reveal otherwise, clear evidence of inmate abuses – “a shocking insight into
the reality of life inside” US prisons. Even the best of them are harsh, the
worst hellish, Davis explaining that videos are “terrible” to watch, saying:

“You’re not only seeing
torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men
dying. In one horrible scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being
led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking
device called a ‘restraint chair.’ His hands and feet are shackled. There’s a
strap across his chest. His head rolls forward. He looks dead. He’s not. Not
yet.”

He’s being punished for having
a pillowcase on his head in his cell and refusing to remove it. Why? He has a
long history of schizophrenia, yet he’s restrained for 16 hours. Two hours
later, “he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment….We
found 20 (other cases of) prisoners who’ve died in the past few years” after
being brutally restrained, what American media won’t report.

Two deaths were in Phoenix, AR
county jail, run by “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” Joe Arpaio. “You don’t want
to be fettered in one of Sheriff Joe’s jails.” His toughness often ends
tragically.

In one tape, nine deputies
manhandle Charles Agster, a tiny man, a mentally disturbed drug user, arrested
for disturbing the peace. Restrained in a chair, one deputy kneeled on his
stomach, “pushing his head forward on to his knees and pulling his arms back to
strap his wrists to the chair. Bending someone double for any length of time”
can cause “positional asphyxia.” After 15 minutes, he’s unconscious. He’s
already brain dead. Hospitalized, he expired three days later.

Another tape showed guards
severely beating a man, Scott Norberg, including Tasering him 19 times and
forcing him into a restraint chair. He suffocated.

Other inmates suffered similar
abuse, including beatings causing broken bones, a broken neck, and internal
injuries. One man died from septicaemia (blood poisoning) after a month in a
coma.

In some tapes, sounds are as
“unbearable” as images, a Florida prison one showing an inmate lying on a
hospital examination table, guards ordering him to get into a wheelchair. “I
can’t, I can’t,” he shouts. “It hurts,” after which he’s Tasered on both hips,
screams, but still can’t get into the wheelchair.

Guards force him into it, bend
his legs painfully, the man shrieking in agony. His lawyer said he’s mentally
impaired, has a back injury, can’t walk, or bend his legs without intense pain.
Yet guards try to make him stand and hold a walker. “He falls on the floor,
crying in agony.” He’s Tasered again, lying there out of breath and energy,
just moaning.

Other tapes show prisoners
handcuffed, brutally beaten, kicked in the head, Tasered, while other guards
“just stand around and watch.” Photographs collected were also horrific,
showing prisoners doused with pepper spray, “then left to cook in the burning
fog of chemicals.” one image revealed a man with “a huge patch of raw skin over
his hip.” Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A
third has deep burns on his buttocks.

“Fire extinguisher” sized
pepper spray canisters are used, at times inflicting second degree burns all
over prisoners’ bodies. For those targeted, “The tell-tale sign is they turn
off the ventilation fans in the unit,” and shove cardboard in door cracks to
make units air-tight.

On man on death row for
killing a prison guard was brutally beaten to death. He began writing to
Florida newspapers about prison brutality and corruption. “So a gang of guards
stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs,
punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die.”

Several guards later tried for
murder were acquitted. The warden was promoted to head of all Florida prisons.
The few guards willing to discuss what goes on have a “siege mentality. They
see themselves outnumbered, surrounded by dangerous, violent criminals, so they
back each other up, no matter what….it solidifies into a general climate of
acceptance among the many.” Even decent staff do their best under hard
circumstances. Ratting means getting themselves in trouble, maybe abused or
fired.

As for inmates, “the notion of
rehabilitation has been almost lost. The focus is entirely on punishment,” the
harsher the better based on examples like the above. They’re not the exception.
They’re more the rule in federal, state and local prisons.

Davis said contact was
maintained with families and prisoner rights groups. As a result, “Every single
day come more emails full of fresh horror stories,” showing inmate treatment
domestically like at Guantanamo and other torture prisons, guards brutalizing
them with impunity.

“Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo – or
even Texas. The prisoners and all guards may vary, but the abuse is still too
familiar,” one of many of America’s dirty secrets.

America’s Gulag – The World’s
Largest Prison Population

On December 8, 2009, US
Justice Department Bureau of Justice Statistics reported over 2.4 million
imprisoned Americans at year end 2008. They include inmates in federal and
state facilities, local jails, Indian, juvenile, and military ones, US
territories, and numbers held by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In addition, another 7.3
million are under correctional supervision, and 13 million pass through US
prisons and jails annually. Half are for non-violent offenses. Half of those
are drug-related. In 1980, 40,000 drug offenders were imprisoned. Today, it’s
over 500,000 because of the “war on drugs,” that’s part of the war on civil
liberties.

Since 1970, America’s prison
population grew eightfold, not for more crime, for getting “tough” on it
against more people getting longer sentences under extremely harsh conditions.
Recent Center for Economic Policy Research figures compare America’s
incarceration rate per 100,000 population with other OECD countries in
2008/2009, showing the following:

– Iceland 44

– Japan 63

– Denmark 66

– Finland 67

– Norway 70

– Sweden 74

– Switzerland 76

– Ireland 85

– Germany 90

– Italy 92

– Belgium 94

– France 96

– South Korea 97

– Austria 98

– Netherland 100

– Portugal 104

– Greece 109

– Canada 116

– Australia 134

– Slovakia 151

– Hungary 152

– England and Wales 153

– Luxembourg 155

– Turkey 161

– Spain 162

– New Zealand 197

– Czech Republic 206

– Mexico 209

– Poland 224

– America 753 – the highest
percentage in the world, higher than Russia at 629, and a total prison
population four times China’s with its fourfold higher population.

Worse still, America’s
incarceration rate from 1880 through 1980 held steady for over 100 years. It
then skyrocketed over the past 30 while crime rates stabilized or fell – a
shocking indictment of a criminally unjust system, filling beds for the
prison-industrial complex, around 8% in prisons-for-profit, the population
comprised of two-thirds Blacks and Latinos.

They’re victimized by get
tough on crime policies, racist drug laws, mandatory minimums, one size fits
all, three strikes and you’re out, a guilty unless proved innocent mentality,
being in America undocumented, and Muslims for their faith, ethnicity,
prominence, or charity to the wrong recipients, those unjustly called
terrorists.

Sexual Abuse and Treatment of
Women

About 200,000 women are
incarcerated in US federal, state, local and immigrant detention prisons,
nearly 10% of America’s prison population. In its Fact Sheet – Sexual Assault
and Misconduct Against Women in Prison, Amnesty International (AI) explained
that:

“The imbalance of power
between inmates and guards involves the use of direct physical force and
indirect force based on the prisoner’s total dependency on officers for basic
necessities and the guards’ ability to withhold privileges. Some women are
coerced into sex for favors such as extra food or personal hygiene products, or
to avoid punishment.”

Daily they’re affected by:

Powerlessness and Humiliation:

Male guards and other prison
officials abuse women by rape, other sexual assault, sexual extortion, and
random body searches. They also watch them undress, take showers or use
toilets. Women who complain face brutal recrimination.

Retaliation and Fear:

Guards use inmates’ personal
history files, including prior complaints, to enforce silence by threatening
visitation rights, other privileges and at times punishment.

Like men, women are victimized
by the war on drugs, especially those of color.

Medical Neglect:

Women are denied essential
resources and treatment, especially reproductive care when pregnant, or for
treatable diseases. Also for chronic and degenerative ones, exacerbating them
as a result. The common attitude is they’re prisoners. Who cares!

In addition, few qualified
staff means long delays and inferior treatment, compounded by overall
indifference. Other problems include facilities charging inmates, shackling
during treatment, not addressing substance abuse, and inadequate mental health
services. Prisoners have no rights whatever, staff given impunity to abuse them
freely.

Discrimination Based on Race:

Black women are eight or more
times likely than Caucasians to be imprisoned, their numbers comprising about
half the female population, mostly for drug-related or other nonviolent
offenses.

Latina women experience four
times the incarceration rate as whites. State and federal laws mandate minimum
sentences for all drug “offenders,” eliminating judicial discretion to excuse
first-timers or refer others to counseling or other non-punitive programs.

Further, crack cocaine is the
only illegal substance mandating prison for first time possession,
disproportionately affecting Blacks, their common drug of choice.

Simple first-time powder
cocaine possession is a misdemeanor, punishable at most up to one year in
prison. For crack, however, it’s five years, Blacks accounting for 84% of
convictions in 2000, Hispanics 9% and Whites 6%.

Discrimination Based on Sexual
Orientation:

Juror perceptions are
especially biased against gay, lesbian or transgender defendants, compounded
during imprisonment when guards and officials act more abusively against a
perceived lifestyle they reject.

All inmates are powerless,
women most of all, making them especially vulnerable to abuse, including rape
and other forms of sexual assault, despite federal and state laws criminalizing
forced or nonconsensual acts. Yet they repeatedly happen, many unreported for
fear of recrimination or inability to provide proof. Other times out of shame
or expectation that charges will be scoffed at.

In addition, women at times
reporting them are isolated, ostensibly for safety, but the effect takes a
physical and emotional toll. According to Deborah Golden, staff attorney for
the DC Prisoners’ Project of the Washington Lawyer’ Committee for Civil Rights
and Urban Affairs, many women don’t view sex as an abuse. Most experienced
sexual and other physical mistreatment before prison, reports Sarah From,
Women’s Prison Association public policy director.

In 2004, AI reported nearly
2,300 sexual abuse cases against men and women, the true totals far higher
according to experts believing the problem is systemic and growing.

According to a 2007 Bureau of
Justice Statistics report titled, “Sexual Victimization in State and Federal
Prisons Reported by (male and female) Inmates,” 4.5% of prisoners (108,000)
reported being abused in the past year – also grossly understated because most
incidents aren’t reported. In addition, they’re equally common against men and
women, Human Right Watch saying at least 140,000 males are raped during
incarceration.

In her 2006 paper titled,
“Sexual abuse of women in United States prisons: a modern corollary of
slavery,” Brenda Smith compared the similarities, explaining that custody
is the common thread even though, unlike slaves, prisoners ostensibly have rights
under Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, the
Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery and involuntary servitude, and US law.

Abuse, however, remains
unchecked, Angela Davis calling prison rape “an institutionalized component of
punishment behind prison walls,” men, women, and children victimized. Further,
they’re almost never provided mental health services to handle trauma, nor are
guards given proper training or mandates to prevent sex crimes in the first
place. This issue was addressed by the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA),
the first federal law regarding sexual assault on prisoners, aiming to curb it
through a “zero-tolerance” policy, as well as research and information
gathering.

It calls for developing
national standards to prevent, detect, reduce and punish sexual assault, making
data on them more available to administrators, and holding officials and guards
more accountable for their actions. But laws without enforcement are hollow,
prisoner rights historically America’s lowest priority. Those incarcerated are
society’s most abused and mistreated, especially vulnerable women out of sight
behind bars.

Male Rape in Prison

Against women or men, rape
inflicts pain and suffering. As a result, human rights and humanitarian groups
as well as international courts now recognize it as torture. Most US states
define it as forced, nonconsensual sex. California’s law mirrors others saying:

It’s sexual intercourse
carried out “against a person’s will by means of force, violence, duress,
menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the person or
another.” It’s also when “the perpetrator threatens to use public authority to
imprison, arrest, (otherwise punish), or deport the victim or another, and the
victim reasonably believes the perpetrator is a public official.”

This article focuses on
torture against men and women, inflicted by prison guards and officials. Male
rape is generally inmate-on-inmate. As a result, the topic is covered briefly,
very much deserving detailed discussion in a separate article.

In April 2001, Human Rights
Watch (HRW) published a report titled, “No Escape: Male Rape in US Prisons,”
citing studies showing about one in five men raped at least once during
confinement. Documenting it with dozens of first-and accounts, HRW explained
its long-lasting effects, including depression, PTSD, and HIV-AIDS, one victim
saying:

“I remained in shock and
paralyzed in thought for two days until I was able to muster the courage to
report it. This is the most dreadful and horrifying experience of my life.”

According to HRW, “Rape is not
an inevitable consequence of prison life, but it certainly is a predictable one
if little is done to prevent it and punish it.” Indifference to prisoner rights
perpetuates it against vulnerable men, women and children.

In Supermax and other prisons,
inmates compare long-term isolation to being buried alive. It also contributes
to anti-social behavior and mental illness, experts saying punitive sensory deprivation
changes behavior for the worst by crushing the human spirit, mind and body. Yet
80,000 or more Americans languish in isolation in US federal, state and local
prisons. Over time, living in windowless cells with no human contact for 23
hours a day causes:

– severe anxiety;

– panic attacks;

– lethargy;

– insomnia;

– nightmares;

– dizziness;

– irrational anger, at times
uncontrollable;

– confusion;

– social withdrawal;

– memory loss;

– delusions and
hallucinations;

– mutilations;

– profound despair and
hopelessness;

– suicidal thoughts;

– paranoia; and

– for many, a totally
dysfunctional state and inability ever to live normally outside of confinement.

A Final Comment

An earlier article discussed
“Torture As Official US Policy,” accessed through the following link:

It addressed post-9/11 Bush
administration policies in prisons like Guantanamo and others abroad,
explaining the systemic use of prohibited interrogation practices, excluding
only those causing organ failure.

The Sentencing Project.org says America’s
criminal justice system “fall(s) short of meeting its international human
rights obligations,” in accordance with established international law. Systemic
prison torture is the clearest example.

Stephen Lendman lives
in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge
discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the
Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and
Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

--
A revolution now cannot be confined to the place or people where it may
commence, but flashes with lightning speed from heart to heart, from land to
land, til it has traversed the globe ...
--Frederick Douglass